Elik Gorelik was 15 when he found an underpriced pair of Jordans on eBay. The profit was about $20. He says that pair changed how he looked at shoes.

By graduation he had about 100 pairs, squeezed between school, wrestling and late selling. A regular job after college did not stick. A year and a half later he quit and resold from his parents' house until boxes filled the bedroom and the hall.

That pile pushed him into a small Los Angeles shop during the pandemic, a few hundred pairs and thin margins. He says the shop and the live streams now move about 1,000 pairs a week by chasing volume instead of one hyped release.

Boxes in the hallway

On Upflip he talks about margins that disappear if you only hunt the famous shoe. The episode is about a bedroom inventory that had to become a store.

The weekly count is his. The start was a $20 flip and a pair he was not supposed to find.